Art Zine, Jeannie Phan, jeanniephan.com
You know those black and white graphic prints that adorn all the hipster album covers? Well Bodies and Cosmos looks like that. Hipster-bashing aside, Bodies and Cosmos is a beautiful piece of art. Visually arresting and beautifully designed, it would be the prize coffee table book of the year in the world of zines: one that you actually enjoyed reading all the way through not just displaying it for aesthetic purposes. Bodies and Cosmos is entirely filled with prints, without any written words. There is no narrative, though several themes and motifs are worked on repeatedly. Severed, disjointed bodies make up the bulk of the subject matter. The “cosmos” part is more subtle, consisting of pages of repetitive patterns that loosely conform to satellite photos of galaxies. The two are often blended together, with galaxy-like motifs on the bodies and bodies foating amidst celestial patterns. Though Jeannie Phan’s drawings sometimes seem to be strange for strangeness’ sake, at the end of the zine, one is left with a strong desire to find more of her drawings to use as Tumblr backgrounds. (Leanne Wang)